If I do not give away the responsibility, Then I can not be disappointed with the outcome.
Meaning if the outcome is poor, I can only be upset with myself. I'm afraid the heart of this is that I find it easy for forgive myself and hard to forgive others. So how does this work in regards to song writing?
I have recently been spending a lot of time on the Worship Together blog (http://www.worshiptogether.com/). This sight is an excellent resource for professional and lay worshipers, with their product reviews, tutorials, and song charts. As I've been looking for new music to learn I continually come across videos of writing teams discussing their collaboration on a piece of music, and as they discuss their back and forth work process or the communion they experienced during the writing process, I look back at the list of songs I have composed and try to find any similar experience. Honestly I cant say that I have had one. Most of the music in my catalogue I wrote on my own. I suppose there is a satisfaction in ownership, but to be writing music for 10 years and never to have collaborated with another musician, I am more and more finding it hard to consider this a strength.
So as worshipers, writers, and Christians the question I pose to you is this. How does/ should the idea of Christian Community influence your song writing process?
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ReplyDeleteit influences me tremendously, and all of us more than we know. none create from a vacuum, all are acted upon and influenced by culture.
ReplyDeletefor me, being in community helps:
1) generate new song ideas. being around others & what they're learning in life or about God helps shape new thoughts in me (even if i disagree with them). every time i lead worship, i try to touch base with the person teaching/preaching, find out the text in scripture they're coming from, as well as where they're headed. i then try to spend time in that text as well as the thought, asking God to help me create a prayer of response that would help people engage with that. this last sunday i worked on a simple tag that i played right after "come thou fount". it wasn't elaborate, it was short & sweet, but helped people praying using specific thoughts from the sermon.
2) refine songs. my songs are one dimensional. i can fall in the same lyrical and musical ruts, but playing or showing my songs to others (that i trust) after i've created something helps shape the song. there is song writing and song crafting, and community helps in both those arenas. another discipline that's fun is to find others you can write with. ask someone to bring a chord progression, or a chorus or something, and go from there.
3) join in singing the songs. there's nothing like writing a song and then have others sing that with you. all the more, when the subject matter is the God we love. while music absolutely helps individuals sort through things on their own, it also helps bring communities together to sing one song. it's one of the few activities we can all do together when we gather. may we learn to sing to God, but also to each other to remind each other the greatest gift of grace is ours in Christ!
Thanks Joel, love the idea about the response tag.
ReplyDelete